Palestinian Cars Vandalised in Apparent Revenge Attack

Suspected Jewish extremists have vandalized Palestinian property in the West Bank in an apparent revenge attack for the killing of an Israeli soldier and evacuation of a settler outpost, police said Thursday.

Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse that "a number of suspects went into the village of Burqa" east of the Palestinian political capital of Ramallah, "and attempted to set fire to three vehicles".

"Graffiti was found at the scene," he said.

An AFP correspondent said the slogans "Death to Arabs", "Regards from Geulat Zion", "We love you Tomer Hazan" and "Price tag" were scrawled on the wall of a mosque.

Geulat Zion was a settler outpost in the northern West Bank that the Israeli army demolished on Wednesday.

Settlers then rampaged through the nearby Palestinian village of Jalud, setting fire to an olive grove and stoning cars and the local elementary school.

The army arrested four settlers.

Tomer Hazan is the 20-year-old Israeli soldier who was last month lured to a village in the northern West Bank and killed by a Palestinian with whom he had worked near Tel Aviv.

The correspondent said Burqa is near Psagot, the settlement where a nine-year-old girl was shot and wounded on Saturday in an attack security forces believe was carried out by Palestinians.

The Israeli army on Monday detained two Palestinians from nearby town of Al-Bira in connection to the attack.

"Price tag" is the term used by Jewish extremists carried out in pursuit of their hardline agenda.

Such attacks initially targeted Palestinians in retaliation for state moves to dismantle unauthorized settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank.

But they later spread to include a broader range of targets with racist and xenophobic overtones.

Earlier this week, suspected Jewish extremists vandalized two cars in east Jerusalem and scrawled graffiti blaspheming against the Prophet Mohammed.

That incident came a day after police said they had arrested 14 Jewish minors suspected of carrying out a wave of "price tag" attacks, mainly in east Jerusalem.